The Winds of Tepr

Yohazatz riders slam through the streets in a ragged wedge, hooves striking sparks from cobble. Puripal rides near the point, cloak torn, hair loose from its neat tie. Dukar is at his flank, sword drawn, eyes scanning doors and rooftops for an ambush that doesn't come. Behind them, Temej stragglers. On foot, pirates. They're all going back toward the Slump.

Bo'anem howls around them. The palace burns behind like a second sun, orange glare licking the low clouds. Bells stutter, then go silent as towers fall.

The safehouse is already halfway to organized chaos by the time they drag the doors shut. Smoke-stung pirates stumble in, some laughing hysterically, some too quiet. Slump kids haul buckets, blankets, rag-piles that become pallets. The air is a crush of sweat, blood, and old fish.

"Get the wounded down!" someone yells. "Not on the dye vats, are you insane, that's lye—"

Puripal swings off his horse, tossing the reins to a boy who grabs them like they're a royal decree. His boots hit the floor and his body remembers that he's not a statue; his knees nearly buckle. He steadies himself on the doorframe, breathing hard, eyes raking the room.

No Ta.

Dukar doesn't dismount so much as fall, landing running. He barrels through the crush, shoving past a pirate with a broken arm, ducking under a hanging loom-beam.

"Ta!" he bellows. "Ta!"

His voice ricochets off damp bricks, comes back smaller.

"Where is he?" Dukar demands, catching her shoulders. "Where is Ta? And Shan Xi? And the twins?"

"Captain's not with us," a pirate says from a nearby pallet. She's sitting up, arm bound to her chest, hair singed short on one side. Her face is streaked with ash and tears both, neither fully acknowledged. "Nor the clever sisters."

Dukar stalks over, eyes burning. "What did you see?"

The pirate swallows. "Courtyard was a meat grinder. Musket fire from the balconies. I saw the boy—Ta—take one in the neck. Went down like someone cut his strings. The twins dropped with him. Captain Shan Xi covered them, yelling at us to fall back." Her gaze slides away. "Couldn't get back in. Place was coming down. Didn't see them again."

The words hit the room like another volley.

Puripal exhales through his nose, the sound thin. "Until we confirm otherwise, we need to plan on the assumption that they are dead."

Dukar rounds on him. "Assumption?"

Puripal meets his glare. His face is composed, but his hands betray him; one thumb rubs the base of his other ring finger raw. "We have one functioning safehouse, a half-broken cavalry, pirates with no captain, and a city on fire," he says steadily. "If we pretend our missing are about to stroll through that door, we delay decisions we cannot afford to delay."

"So we leave him," Dukar spits.

"We already left him," Puripal shoots back, sharper than intended. "This discussion is about what we do now."

Temej, lurking near the entry with Notso pressed against his leg, watches the exchange like a hawk watching a storm front.

Dukar takes a step closer. "You're very calm about abandoning your brother."

Puripal flinches, nearly imperceptible. "Ta is many things to me," he says. "But he is not helped by me running back into a collapsed palace alone because it makes my heart feel pure."

"You could try," Dukar snarls, and shoves him.

For a moment it looks like Puripal might go down. He staggers, shoulder hitting a post, knocking dust from the beams. Conversations in the room falter. The nearest pirate sucks in a breath, eyes darting between them like she's watching a fuse burn.

Puripal straightens slowly. He adjusts his coat, as if it's the coat that was out of place.

"You're tired," he says, too composed. "And you're grieving. I am not going to trade insults with you when your pulse is writing them."

"Don't talk to me like I'm your subordinate," Dukar bites out.

"Then stop behaving like one," Puripal snaps, the edge finally coming through. "If Ta were here, he would be shouting at you for wasting breath on me instead of on the wounded. Or does your devotion go only as far as dramatic gestures?"

Dukar's fist bunches. For a heartbeat, violence trembles in the air between them.

Notso chooses that moment to sneeze explosively.

The huge dog's head jerks, ears flapping; a fine spray of dog-snot mists Dukar's sleeve. He looks down at it, momentarily derailed.

Temej steps neatly into the gap.

"Enough," the eagle-keeper says, voice low but carrying. "Puripal, there are lines of men outside waiting for someone to tell them where to put their wounds. Dukar, you should calm down for a minute."

Dukar drags a hand over his face, breathing like he's just come off a charge. His shoulders loosen a fraction.

Puripal turns away before Dukar can answer, barking orders at the nearest Yohazatz officer, following the line of the wounded deeper into the warehouse.

The room exhales.

Temej touches Dukar's elbow. "Come," he says. "The dog is offended by all this shouting. He wants to sulk somewhere quieter."

Notso, as if understanding, huffs and pads toward a shadowed corner. Dukar lets himself be guided, because the alternative is punching the Khan of Yohazatz, and even in his frayed state he knows that would complicate things.

They end up outside, in the narrow yard behind the safehouse, where rainwater barrels line the wall and the night feels slightly less crowded. The palace fire paints the clouds bruise-orange over the rooftops. Notso flops down with a grunt, great head in Dukar's lap like a gift.

Dukar's fingers find the dog's fur automatically, sinking into its thick, coarse warmth. The repetitive motion grounds him. His other hand trembles against his knee.

"Ta is like my brother," he says abruptly.

Temej leans against the wall, arms loose, eyes on the sky. "I get it," he answers.

"He shouldn't die in a corridor I wasn't watching," Dukar mutters. "Not like that. Not… not with his fear still in his throat."

Silence settles, thick but not hostile. Somewhere above, an eagle screams, the sound thin in the city noise.

"We don't know that he's dead," Temej says eventually.

"We know he took a musket ball to the neck," Dukar retorts. "And that the palace fell on him. And that the captain is missing too. You want to calculate those odds?"

Temej considers the glowing sky. "Odds," he says. "You saw a pirate say she saw him fall, in smoke, while the ground tried to climb into the air. That's not a report. That's a nightmare."

Dukar snorts despite himself. "You're very calm."

Temej shrugs one shoulder. "I know someone who is hard to kill. It annoys a lot of people. Including me, sometimes. It's your sister."

He pushes off the wall, crouches to scratch Notso behind one ear. The dog groans in pleasure, rolling enough to expose a scandalous amount of belly.

"We can't be sure he's dead until we see his body," Temej says. "And even then, with Ta, I'd want to poke it with a stick to make sure. He could be captured. He could be under a table shouting at everyone. He and Shan Xi and the little doctors could have found a rat-hole out and be limping back here right now. We don't know. So we hold the line they bled for and keep a fire lit."

Dukar stares at him. "That's it?"

Temej shrugs. "Also we drink when there's something worth toasting. That part comes later."

The corner of Dukar's mouth moves. Almost a smile.

"I appreciate your calm," he says grudgingly. "Even if I want to hit you with it."

"That's why I brought your dog," Temej says. "He's softer."

They sit awhile, the three of them, under a sky that smells of rain and burning roofs. The shouts from inside the safehouse blur to a steady noise.

Through an open window, Puripal passes by once, silhouetted, shoulders bowed in a way he would never allow in daylight. His hand lifts to his face, fingers pressing the bridge of his nose hard, as if he can squeeze decisions out through bone. He moves like a man assembling battle plans with half the pieces missing and no idea which half those are.

He doesn't sleep. The night gnaws at him. Every time he closes his eyes, he sees Ta's body bleeding in foreign land, Dukar's shove always follows it.

...

Inside the carriage, Yorin adjusts her glasses with hands that only shake a little. Her hair has come loose from its neat pins, a few strands plastered to her forehead with sweat. Ink smears her cuffs where she clutched at notes earlier that are now ashes.

Miju offers a hand. Yorin hesitates, then takes it, descending with more dignity than the circumstances deserve.

For a moment, they just stand there, breathing ragged city air, listening to the distant roar of the burning palace.

"Well," Yorin says, voice hoarse, almost conversational. "That was a disaster."

Miju's mouth twitches. Not a smile. Something sharper. "You think?"

"We raided a key insurgent base and failed to secure any of the primary targets alive," Yorin continues, as if reading from a report. "We lost control of the palace. The senate building is currently an open flame. Our own militia suffered heavy casualties. Public confidence will—"

"Stop," Miju snaps. "If you list every failure we will still be here when the roof falls on us."

Yorin pushes her glasses higher. "Reality does not care for our calendar."

Miju's gaze drifts toward the column of smoke stabbing the sky. For a heartbeat, something like grief shadows her features. The palace was hers. Not sentimentally—strategically. It was control, a fortress of marble and ledger.

Now it is kindling.

"They will call it a symbol," she says. "Of our order dying. Of pirates bringing the sea to our doors." Her hand curls briefly into a fist. "They will not mention that it burns because our own people failed to hold it."

"Or because we asked them to hold too many fronts at once," Yorin says, quietly. "That part is on us."

Miju grinds her teeth. Admitting that much feels like chewing glass.

Silence stretches. The night presses in.

"Where is Tomoe?" Yorin asks suddenly.

Miju blinks. "She was in the palace. With the inner ring. Suppressing the dockside entry. If the pirates breached that far, she would have engaged them."

"Yes," Yorin says. "And now she is…?"

Miju's jaw muscles flex. She looks back toward the burning palace.

"Tomoe and the pirate queen are each other's shadow," she says. "If Shan Xi was there, Tomoe is either chasing her or lying under a wall she tried to bring down on her head."

"Reassuring," Yorin murmurs.

Miju inhales, slow and vicious. "She is not dead," she says, as if daring the universe to contradict her. "Tomoe does not die while her enemy still breathes. She has waited too long to put that woman in the ground."

Yorin studies the fire. The flames lick higher, devouring painted rafters and priceless tapestries with the same indifference.

"If she is still alive," Yorin says, "we will need her. The pirates have teeth; the Triumvirate has… concepts. Tomoe has discipline. Without her, this republic is a set of elegant theories on very flammable paper."

Miju snorts. "You're the one who tells me theories move people."

"They do," Yorin replies. "But they move faster when attached to a bayonet."

...

Shan Xi steps out of the alley like she is stepping onto a stage.

The street beyond is a corridor of fire and smoke. The palace burns at its far end, a great, choking bloom of flame devouring a dynasty's paperwork. Between here and there, Baekjeon-kai marines form and re-form, trying to remember their drills while the world ends.

They see her. Pale coat streaked with soot, sabre wet, fan hanging in tatters. A few flinch; they've heard the stories. Pirate queen. But myths don't matter when your sergeant is screaming.

"Form line! Fire by rank!"

Muskets come up in a clumsy wave.

Shan Xi moves before they can.

She doesn't charge the muzzle-flash like a fool. She sprints sideways, boots slipping on broken tile, using the leaning walls as cover. The first volley shreds the air where she was, splintering shutters, punching holes in a painted signboard of a smiling crab. Smoke blooms, acrid and thick.

She hits the flank of their line like a thrown hook.

The first marine gets the flat of her sabre across his wrist; bone cracks, the musket drops. She kicks it behind her without looking. The second she shoulder-checks into a wall, knocking the breath and courage out of him in one go. The third, she simply shoves backwards into his comrades. The neat firing line collapses into a stumbling knot of men swearing and tripping over each other.

But she doesn't kill them.

She slams one helm-first into the cobbles, then plants her boot on his chest and raises her voice.

"KAGAWA TOMOE!"

The name ricochets off stone and smoke.

"Admiral! Get your lacquered hide out here!"

A musket barrel swings toward her face. Shan Xi catches it bare-handed, twists. The man attached to it yelps as the weapon pinwheels from his grip and skitters away.

"I said," she snarls, shoving him down, "Tomoe."

For a heartbeat, only crackle and coughs answer. Then a voice, cool as steel pulled from water:

"Pirate."

The marines part like a curtain.

Tomoe steps through, smoke wreathing her like an afterthought. Her armor is scorched, one sleeve blackened by powder. The naginata rests easy in her hands, its blade smeared with someone else's blood. A musket hangs at her back, half-hidden by the flutter of a singed cloak.

"I thought we already parted," she says.

"Likewise," Shan Xi replies. "But I missed your beautiful face."

Tomoe's gaze flicks to the marines. Some clutch bruised limbs; one groans, breath wheezing.

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"You left them breathing," she notes.

Shan Xi spreads her hands. "Proof that I'm here to talk. If I wanted a pile of navy meat, I'd have one."

"I have nothing to discuss with a pirate," Tomoe says. "Drop the blade. Kneel. Perhaps the Republic will be generous."

Shan Xi laughs once.

"Oh, we absolutely have something to discuss," she says. "I brought you a gift. The king is dead. Short lives the king."

Tomoe goes still.

Her knuckles tighten on the naginata shaft. "Choose your words carefully."

"Prince, then," Shan Xi amends, shrugging. "He never got around to sitting on anything solid. But his blood is royal enough, yes?"

Tomoe's disgust is quiet. "You expect me to believe you have Yotaka's head in your pocket."

"Not just the head," Shan Xi says. "Come see."

She turns her back on the admiral and walks toward the alley.

The marines twitch. Tomoe lifts two fingers; they hold. Her curiosity moves faster than discipline. She follows.

The alley stinks of blood and old fish. Smoke snakes along its ceiling like a reluctant spirit.

Lizi still kneels where Shan Xi left her, cradling Yotaka as if he might wake if she just finds the right word. The twins see them come and crouch again over Ta, hands stained to the elbow, improvising pressure bandages from whatever cloth hasn't caught fire yet.

Shan Xi doesn't slow.

"Move," she says.

Lizi doesn't seem to hear. Her fingers are tangled in Yotaka's hair, her face buried in the hollow of his neck.

Shan Xi's jaw tightens. She sets her boot against Lizi's shoulder and pushes, not brutal but not gentle either. Lizi tips sideways, arms slackening. The prince's body slips from her hold onto the cobbles with a soft, obscene thud.

"Look," Shan Xi says.

Tomoe does.

The world narrows to a dead boy on the dirty stones. His robe is soaked through, the fabric dark and heavy. His eyes are half-lidded, lashes clumped with soot. There is a smear of ash on his cheek in the shape of a thumbprint. His lips are parted as if caught mid-word.

For a moment Tomoe doesn't move.

He is an enemy symbol. A hypothetical threat. An heir to a system she helped destroy. He is also ten, maybe, and looks younger in death.

"You did this?" she asks.

Shan Xi's mouth tilts. "You're welcome. The Republic owes me a statue."

Lizi makes a choked sound, somewhere between a laugh and a sob.

Tomoe drags her gaze away from Yotaka to Ta. The twins hover over him like carrion with ethics. His pulse is a barely-there flutter under their fingers.

"And him," she says. "still not dead?"

"Not yet," Shan Xi acquiesces. "Clean shot, by the way. Right where it hurts most. This is Ta. The sleek Sand-Fox. The one who's been chewing your supply lines into art."

Tomoe's lip curls. "Then the world may be improved if he stops breathing."

"Mm," Shan Xi says. "Except he's one of the few brains on this island not busy trying to crown something. That makes him… inconveniently worth saving."

"You can't save him," Tomoe says flatly. "It's madness."

Pragya clears her throat, timid in the shadow of these two monsters. "In fairness," she says, "it might work."

Tomoe looks at her, one brow arched. "Explain."

Pragya gestures with her bloody hands. "He's young. Ta's lost a lot of blood; we can try to replace some. It's… like exchanging rivers between channels. Our instruments are crude, but—"

"Crude is what we have," Pragati mutters.

Tomoe folds her arms, naginata balanced in the crook of her elbow. "So your plan," she says slowly, "is to pour the last king's blood into a saboteur from the steppe, at the suggestion of a pirate, in the middle of a burning capital."

"Yes," Shan Xi says. "We live in interesting times."

"And after?" Tomoe asks. "You give me the body? Or do you stuff it and hang it on your mast as a warning?"

Shan Xi holds her gaze. "Once the twins are done, I have no more use for the corpse. You can parade it through the streets, burn it in the square, sew it into a banner, whatever your Republic heart desires. I killed your ghost for you. Now I'm asking you to help me keep my people breathing."

Tomoe studies her. There is an edge of something in Shan Xi's eyes—exhaustion, maybe, or the thin line where principle and pragmatism grind against each other until sparks fly.

"You think we can be on the same side," Tomoe says.

"I think we already are," Shan Xi replies. "You kill kings with proclamations. I kill them with steel. We both want a world without their shadows. You just happen to serve a council that's busy becoming what it swore to burn."

Tomoe's jaw works once. She looks back at Yotaka. The prince's hand has fallen palm-up, fingers curled as if about to grasp something that never arrives.

"The hospital," she says abruptly to the twins. "There's a naval ward three streets down. Stone walls, real tables. I know the surgeon in charge."

Shan Xi's smile is sharp. "See? We cooperate beautifully already."

...

The hospital squats behind the dock quarter, its bricks and plaster stained with salt.

Inside, it is chaos. Wounded militia and marines overflow into corridors, groaning on pallets hastily laid on the tiles. Surgeons shout for more bandages, more water, more help that isn't coming. The air is a stew of boiled linen, old sweat, and iron.

The double doors slam open under Tomoe's kick.

"Injured priority," she snaps, striding in, naginata like a command staff. "Clear the west ward."

A junior physician hustles toward her, sleeves rolled to the elbow, hands shaking. "Admiral, we're full. We have men waiting in the—"

Tomoe doesn't slow. She hooks the butt of her naginata around a curtain and yanks it aside, revealing a row of groaning marines.

"Out," she says. "New orders."

Shan Xi follows in her wake with the twins and their burdens. Ta is limp between them, skin ashen. Yotaka comes on a makeshift stretcher behind, his head lolling with each jolt.

The doctor stares. "Who—"

Shan Xi flashes a grin that is all teeth.

"Special patients," she says.

Within minutes, the ward empties under Tomoe's barked commands and Shan Xi's predatory smile. Nurses strip bloody sheets; the twins set up their station, transforming a scarred wooden table into an altar of desperate science.

"Boil everything," Pragya orders. "Knives, needles, reeds. If it can cut, it can kill."

Steam soon ghosts the air, wrestling with the smell of blood.

They lay Ta on the main table. Yotaka they put on another, close enough that the twins can reach both with their strange apparatus: hollow reeds, thin copper tubes from Sen's last care package, strips of boiled gut.

"This is obscene," the hospital doctor mutters, pale, but he doesn't leave.

Shan Xi and Tomoe stand shoulder to shoulder, watching as the twins work. Their arms brush once; neither moves away.

Pragya opens a vein in Yotaka's arm with a clean, quick slice. Dark blood wells up sluggishly.

"Still warm enough," she murmurs. "Thank all indifferent heavens."

She fixes one end of a reed into the prince's vein, the other into a length of tubing. At the far end, Pragati opens a small cut in Ta's forearm and slips the tube in. For a heartbeat nothing happens.

Then a slow, dark trickle begins to cross the distance between tables.

"Like stealing wine with a straw," Shan Xi says under her breath.

The tubes tremble with each tiny movement. The twins adjust angles. Ta's eyelids flutter once, then still.

Time stretches. In the corridor, other wounded moan. Somewhere a man screams as a limb comes off. Here, the sound is only drip and breaths.

Gradually, Ta's lips brighten from grey to dull pink. The waxy sheen on his skin fades. His chest, which has been hitching shallowly, begins to rise a fraction deeper.

Pragati lets out a breath she didn't know she was holding. "There," she whispers. "It's working..."

Pragya pinches the tube, severing the flow, and begins the careful work of binding both ends—donor and recipient—closed.

Yotaka does not look any more dead than he did before.

Shan Xi feels something in her shoulders unclench. It doesn't feel like relief. It feels like a reprieve she doesn't deserve.

Tomoe watches Ta's hands, as if expecting them to spring up and throttle her.

"You risk much for one saboteur," she says quietly.

"I risk much for anyone who knows how to pick a lock on the world," Shan Xi answers. "He's good at it. Now, come. We need to talk."

...

Tomoe shuts the door behind them with her heel. The noise from the ward cuts off, leaving only the distant murmur of pain and the close tick of cooling metal.

The office used to belong to some senior surgeon: there's a narrow desk by the shuttered window, ledgers stacked in crooked towers, a jar of cloudy leeches abandoned in the corner. A single oil lamp hangs from a hook, throwing a tired yellow circle over the room.

For the first time since the palace, Shan Xi lets herself sag. Just a little. She leans back against the desk, palms flat on its scarred edge, breathing smoke and carbolic.

Tomoe crosses to a low cabinet, pulls out a stoppered bottle and two chipped cups. She pours without asking. The liquor smells like bad rice.

"Hospital contraband?" Shan Xi asks.

Tomoe hands her a cup. "Medicinal," she says. "For my nerves."

Shan Xi lifts it in a toast. "To your nerves, then. May they be less shredded than mine."

They drink.

The liquor hits both women like a slap. Tomoe coughs once, then laughs under her breath.

"You're enjoying this," Shan Xi observes.

"What, exactly?" Tomoe asks. "Sheltering pirates in my ward? Conspiring to keep a saboteur alive with royal blood? Drinking with my enemy while the Senate burns?"

"Yes," Shan Xi says. "That."

Tomoe smiles, thin and sharp. "I am enjoying being honest for once."

Silence hangs between them, heavy with everything they are not saying. The lamp flame gutters, then steadies.

"You know," Shan Xi says eventually, swirling the liquor, "I've been thinking. Dangerous habit, granted."

Tomoe arches a brow. "I'll brace myself."

"We're not so different," Shan Xi goes on. "You and I."

Tomoe snorts. "I wear a uniform. You steal them."

Shan Xi waves that away. "Details. We both command ships. We both shout at people until they move in the right direction. We both carve lines on the sea with other people's lives. The only real difference is whose flag hangs off the stern."

Tomoe's jaw tightens. "You answer to no one. I answer to the Republic."

"You answer to Baek Miju and her paperwork," Shan Xi corrects. "My crew answers to me, and I answer to the sea."

Tomoe looks at her over the rim of her cup. "And you think that's… better."

"I think it's honest," Shan Xi says. "When I send someone to die, it's my name they curse as they fall, not 'the will of the people.'"

Tomoe's fingers tighten on the cup. "The Republic is more than its Triumvirate."

"Is it?" Shan Xi asks softly. "Because from the harbor, it looks like three frightened blades thrashing in every direction and calling it law."

Tomoe's eyes flicker. She does not reply.

Shan Xi watches her, sees the crack, presses.

"They should be more afraid of other things," she says.

"Such as?" Tomoe's tone is skeptical, but there's room in it.

Shan Xi sets her cup down with a click.

"The Khan of Tepr," she says. "Naci."

Tomoe gives a small, elegant shrug. "We know about khans. They raid, Moukopl burn their horses, everyone goes home."

"Not this time," Shan Xi says. "She doesn't go home. She builds a new one every place she rides through."

There is something different in her voice now. No mockery, no loose jest. Just memory, and the faint ragged edge of respect that has nearly curdled into fear.

Tomoe notices. Her gaze sharpens. "You know her."

"I've fought with her," Shan Xi says. "Shared decks. Many arguments. I watched her turn a skirmish into a training exercise and a training exercise into a war. She's already using your Moukopl friends' navy like spare ribs."

She steps away from the desk, restless, pacing to the shutter, fingers brushing the slats.

"You know about Demoz?" she asks without looking back.

Tomoe stares at her. "The Conqueror? We tell children stories about him to make them sleep."

Shan Xi nods. "Naci's read those stories as instructions. She has muskets now. Banners. Horses that don't fear anything. Men and women who think the sky itself owes them a road."

Tomoe scoffs. "The Khan would have to cross an empire, then our sea, then our walls. We're not a pasture. We're—"

"An island full of people who can't agree which way is 'forward,'" Shan Xi says. "Your Republic is already bleeding. She could smell it from the steppe."

She turns then, one hand still on the shutter, eyes dark in the lamplight.

"When she comes," Shan Xi says quietly, "your emergency decrees and execution lists won't matter. She will not care whether you are monarchist or republican, admiral or pirate. She will look at you and ask one question: 'Do you help me move, or do I move over you?'"

Tomoe has no ready retort. She takes a slow breath, the leather of her breastplate creaking.

"And why," she asks at last, "are you telling me this? Have you pledged yourself to her? Joined her 'Banners'?" The way she says the foreign word is dry. "Has the great Shan Xi changed sides again?"

Shan Xi laughs softly. "Sides are for coins. I'm not interested in being anyone's emblem. Especially not hers."

She crosses back to the desk, closer now. Not touching, but within arm's reach.

"I'm telling you because I just killed a boy who could have been a banner," she says. "and I can do it twice."

Tomoe's gaze hardens. "We're back to that."

"Yes." Shan Xi meets it without flinching. "You asked, in the alley, whether I thought I could save the world."

"And?"

"I can't," Shan Xi says. "But I can stop the world from doing something very stupid with his face."

Tomoe's lips press thin. "He was just a child. He deserved a better execution than from the hands of a pirate."

"He was a story," Shan Xi replies. "Already. Do you know what people do with stories?" She doesn't wait for an answer. "They kneel to them. They bleed for them. They forgive everything in the name of their favorite sentence."

She picks up her cup again, realizes it's empty, sets it down.

"As long as a royal line exists," she says, "people will keep a part of themselves in reserve. They will obey councils, tribunals, senates—until the day they get tired. Then they will turn their eyes to a crown and say, 'save us.'"

"And your solution is to remove every crown," Tomoe says.

"Yes," Shan Xi says simply. "Remove the idea that some child's birth makes them the answer. Make it hurt to believe that. Make it impossible."

Tomoe's voice is very quiet. "Even if the child has done nothing wrong."

"Especially then," Shan Xi says. "A monster king proves the system is broken. A kind one convinces you it works."

Tomoe looks away, jaw clenched. The lamp paints a hard line down her cheekbone.

"You speak of… everyone," she says slowly. "Of freeing 'humanity' from its own bad habits. Big words for a woman who robs ships."

Shan Xi gives a little shrug. "My net is small. I pull in what I can reach." She tilts her head. "You agree with me, mostly."

Tomoe bristles. "Do I?"

"You didn't scream when I offered your Republic a dead prince and a living saboteur," Shan Xi says. "You brought us here. You could have ordered my head on a hook in the yard. You didn't."

Tomoe's eyes flash. "Perhaps I am keeping your head for later."

Shan Xi smiles. "Of course you are."

She takes a half step closer, almost unconsciously. Tomoe doesn't back away.

"I think you believe," Shan Xi continues, softer, "that the concept of kingship is poisonous. You helped cut the last king down. You put your ships in line for that scaffold."

Tomoe's fingers tap against her thigh. "We ended a dynasty that strangled this island for centuries," she says. "We replaced it with a law that belongs to everyone."

"And now your law belongs to three people," Shan Xi counters. "And you are one of them."

Shan Xi leans back on the desk again, eyes hooded.

"You're right about one thing, though," she adds. "You can't fix a system from outside. Not alone. That's my failing. I hit the hull and expect the ship to sink. You go inside and start pulling rot out with a spoon."

Tomoe's mouth twists. "You find this amusing."

"I find it… instructive," Shan Xi says. "We were both born into different storms. Tell me," she says softly. "How does a woman become an admiral in a city that barely admits she exists?"

Tomoe's nostrils flare. For a moment she looks like she might tell Shan Xi to go to hell. Then something else wins.

"My father," she says, each word deliberate, "was a wealthy merchant with more sons than sense. He wanted one of us respectable. I was the only one who liked maps more than dice. So he bribed the academy to accept me."

Her lip curls. "First year, they made me sit in an alcove and listen behind a screen. 'So the boys can concentrate.' I learned the currents faster than any of them. They still made me fetch ink."

Shan Xi's eyes soften, just a fraction. "And after?"

"After graduation, no one would give me a ship," Tomoe says. "Too fragile. Too distracting. So I married an officer twice my age with the spine of a jellyfish and the morals of a stray dog. His family bought him a command. I bought his crew."

She laughs, once, without humor.

"I ran his ship while he drank. I learned to smile and bow while he paraded my face at parties. I learned to look like a wife and think like a storm. When he finally drank himself into a heart failure, the Admiralty realized the ship didn't sink without him." She lifts her chin. "They gave it to me."

"And now you're admiral," Shan Xi says quietly. "Triumvirate's iron wave."

Tomoe's eyes flick up. "I have paid for every wave with a pound of flesh."

Shan Xi nods once. "I don't doubt it."

She pushes off the desk, closing the last distance until they are almost chest to chest. The lamp light catches in Tomoe's eyes. They stand the same height, which feels suddenly important.

"But you had an academy to bribe," Shan Xi says, voice low. "A father with coin. A husband whose name unlocked doors. Slump girls don't get alcoves behind screens. They get doorways in brothels. Or kilns that eat their lungs. Or marriage to a man who doesn't bother to bring them papers with his fists."

She smiles, crooked. "Unless they find a boat with a captain stupid enough to take them on."

Tomoe's gaze searches her face. "Your crew."

"My crew," Shan Xi agrees. "Half my officers started as girls who stole fruit off my deck and tried to bite when we caught them. One used to be a laundress who broke a man's thumb when he tried to push her into a vat."

Tomoe's mouth twitches despite herself. "You are incorrigible."

"I am efficient," Shan Xi says. "I take what the world throws away and turn it into something that can punch back."

She moves past Tomoe, pacing once, then swinging back around.

"Before your Republic," she says, "this island was a king's toy chest. Men owned wives, daughters, servants like furniture. The poor had to beg those same men for crumbs. The Republic promised something better. And for a moment"—she pinches her fingers together, measuring—"for a heartbeat, it almost was."

Tomoe's shoulders ease, remembering. "We opened the academies," she says. "Changed inheritance laws. Gave dockworkers a say in tariffs. I saw widows sign their own leases for the first time."

"And then," Shan Xi says flatly, "you let three people—you included—decide they were the Republic."

Tomoe flinches. "I didn't—"

"You did," Shan Xi repeats, but there's no venom in it. Just tired fact.

She steps closer again, slow this time, as if approaching a skittish animal. Or a mirror.

"Walk away," she says quietly. "From them. From their executions. From their census of who deserves to breathe."

Tomoe's eyes narrow. "And toward what? You? Don't be ridiculous!"

"Toward the thing you thought you were serving in the first place," Shan Xi says. "A world where birth stops dictating worth. Where women aren't diplomatic currency. Where a boy like Ta is not a 'raider' by default, and a boy like Yotaka is not a 'king' because some priest said so."

Tomoe's throat works. She looks down at Shan Xi's hands; there is still a faint crust of drying blood at the knuckles.

"You killed him," she says.

"Yes," Shan Xi answers. The word is soft, and somehow heavier than all the shouting in the world. "And if I can turn that violence into less worship of crowns and more fighting for each other, I will. Then I will think about it every night until I fall overboard."

She lifts her hand, slowly, giving Tomoe time to refuse. When she reaches Tomoe's wrist, she pauses. Tomoe doesn't move.

"I don't want to replace your Triumvirate," Shan Xi says. "I don't want a chair in their chamber. I want their chamber empty, their chairs kindling. Let Naci send envoys and find no single neck to cut."

Tomoe looks up, meets her eyes. "You would have nothing in its place?" she asks.

"Ships," Shan Xi says. "Villages. Councils that can change without blood. The nearest hands when a fire starts, not the farthest signature."

Tomoe huffs a breath. "You want all of Seop to become like Ri island? A pirate haven full of crime and corruption?"

Shan Xi grins. "Seop is already all that, but only for the wealthy."

The grin fades, replaced by something quieter.

"Come with me," she says. "Come aboard the Blood Lotus. See what it's like when a captain answers to her crew and not to a file in Yorin's cabinet."

Tomoe stares at her as if she has grown a second head.

"You are asking me," she says slowly, "to commit treason."

"You committed treason when you cleared that ward," Shan Xi points out. "This would just be… changing uniforms."

Tomoe laughs, startled, and then clamps her lips shut as if offended at herself.

"You are arrogant," she says.

"You're right," Shan Xi responds.

Tomoe sets her cup down.

"I cannot abandon the Republic," she says. "Not the idea of it. Not while Naci is on the horizon and Miju is sharpening her knives. Someone has to steer between them."

"Good," Shan Xi says. "I don't want you to abandon it. I want you to save it from the people currently wearing its skin."

Tomoe's eyes search hers, suspicious and hungry at once.

"You really believe," Tomoe says slowly, "that pirates and admirals could… work together."

Shan Xi smiles, slow and wicked. "We already are. Today we stole a prince's blood, rewrote a death, and lied to half your chain of command."

Tomoe's lips curve despite everything. "You are infuriating."

"You keep saying that," Shan Xi murmurs. "But you haven't thrown me out yet."

Tomoe looks at the door, at the lamp, at their cups. At Shan Xi.

"You are a storm," she says quietly. "You tear things apart. I have spent my life trying to hold things together."

"Maybe," Shan Xi says, taking the last small step forward, "you've been holding together something that needs to break."

They are close enough now that Shan Xi can feel the heat of Tomoe's body through the leather and cloth, can see the tiny scar near her left eyebrow.

Shan Xi lifts her hand and touches it with her thumb.

Tomoe sucks in a breath. Doesn't move.

"I like you better without the helmet," Shan Xi says, voice dropping. "You're less shiny. More dangerous."

"That is a terrible attempt at flattery," Tomoe replies, but her voice has gone low too.

"Terrible but true," Shan Xi says.

Then Tomoe moves.

She closes the last finger's-width between them, one hand fisting in Shan Xi's soot-streaked coat, the other bracing hard against the desk behind Shan Xi's hip. She pulls her in and kisses her like she's boarding a hostile ship: decisive, unforgiving, no room for second thoughts.

Shan Xi exhales against her mouth, a startled, delighted sound. Her hands find Tomoe's waist, fingers digging into leather and linen, dragging her closer until there is no space left for air or argument.

The kiss is not gentle. It is the clashing of two disciplines, two violences finding, to their surprise, that they fit.

When they finally break for breath, Tomoe rests her forehead against Shan Xi's, eyes closed.

"This," she whispers, "is extremely unprofessional."

"Admiral," Shan Xi murmurs, lips grazing hers, "I am a pirate. My profession is bad decisions."